It's a new -- and depressing -- ball game in Havana

Direct from Havana

Team Cuba's unexpected departure from the World Baseball Classic has thrown the island's national pastime into a period of introspection and self-flagellation.

"Our team was humiliated not only by the opposition but by the very people running it," said Lazaro Gonzalez, a loud fan at a corner of Havana's Central Park known for impassioned baseball talk. "They are constantly being lectured like schoolchildren. You see the game is no longer fun for them."

As the Japan defeated South Korea 5-3 last night in the final of what became the Asian Baseball Classic, Cubans were still assigning blame. Cuba's 5-0 loss to Japan was the island's worst international showing in more than six decades. It was the first time Cuba didn't make the final of a major international tournament since Fidel Castro's revolution swept into power 50 years ago.

"I've had trouble sleeping for almost a week now," said Arnaldo Mesa, an exterminator. "My wife doesn't want me around the children because I'm so depressed. My son turns away when he sees me. This will take time to pass."

For some fans, Team Cuba was managed to death, plain and simple. Managed not in a conventional baseball way but in the all-encompassing manner in which the state controls nearly every aspect of Cuban life. Even the starting lineup for each game was=2 0decided by "experts" back in Havana, former President Fidel Castro admitted in one of his "Reflections" on the WBC.

When the Cuban team and delegation arrived in Havana late last week, they were welcomed at the airport by President Raul Castro and other officials. Vice president Esteban Lazo urged the players and delegation to undertake a "profound examination" of Fidel Castro's baseball "Reflection" headlined, "We are to blame."

"We have fallen asleep on our laurels and are now paying the conse quences," Castro wrote in an essay in which he criticized a coaching staff that was presumably taking orders from Havana.

Mesa said the team needed to be left alone.

"The Asians simply played better," he said. "The game doesn't belong to us. We just thought it did."